Francis Ngannou and Ciryl Gane have been taking turns telling stories of knocking each other out in training. Ahead of UFC 270, the fighters have been going at each other with subtle digs.
Fernand Lopez told a story of Ciryl Gane knocking out Francis Ngannou with a liver shot in sparring. The UFC heavyweight champion revealed a story of his own where he knocked out Gane.
“Yes, I knocked him out [with] a left high kick,” Ngannou said at the UFC 270 pre-fight press conference. “There’s a lot of reasons why that footage didn’t come out. Well, let me say this, that knockout wasn’t a voluntary knockout. It wasn’t in sparring. It was an accident. I didn’t intend to knock him out. I didn’t go there to knock him out.
“So personally, it’s not something that I would be proud of and feel tough because I knocked my sparring partner out or knocked him down or whatever,” the UFC champion continued. “Usually, that stuff happens in training, but it’s always an accident. Because we are committed to take care of our partner. That’s how it works.”
Both sides have been breaking the unwritten rule of ‘what happens in the gym stays in the gym.' The two UFC champions will be able to settle their differences very soon.
Of course, stories of what happened in sparring actually mean very little when it comes to the actual fight playing out in the UFC. Many fighters have been proud about winning in the gym and losing out in the arena. UFC 270 will help decide who the real UFC heavyweight champion is.
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